I was fooling around with the Hornady Crimper

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I was fooling around with the Hornady Crimper

Postby Pig_Popper » Thu Dec 15, 2016 9:11 am

I received my die set yesterday and sacrificed a piece of brass and a bullet to the cause.

With the bullet seated in the case and the ram all the way up and die backed all the way out I turned the die until I felt resistance.

Ram goes down and I turned the die another 1/8 " down and locked it in, ran the loaded case through a couple of times and hardly the slightest perceptible crimp. With my thumb I could still set the bullet back (into the case deeper).

So I redid the above and went in increments of half turns and before you know it I was a couple of revolutions around. When pulling the press handle it didn't take superman strength but you could feel the crimp being applied. I thought good this is working.

...Until I pulled the ram down and the case now had 3 distinct bands at various locations (mouth and segmented below the mouth).

The cartridge is malformed (won't chamber) so obviously over crimping with the Hornady die is possible and not optimal but I cannot in my minds eye see why the die is crimping three parts of the case. I suppose it is tapered within which goes along with the name of the crimp but this shouldn't be a guessing game.

All dies should be the same from the factory, "should" so from the initial point of contact with the case how far are you turning your crimp in and setting at for Hard Copper or monolithic bullet and what is your measured dimension (.474 or .475 or .476 etc)

Yes I am wanting to ballpark this, my primary concern and reason for crimping is to prevent bullet set back - operating without a micrometer and other tools I can expect accuracy to suffer and I am fine with that to a 1 MOA extent.

Your assistance is appreciated!
Last edited by Pig_Popper on Thu Dec 15, 2016 1:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: I was fooling around with the Hornady Crimper

Postby Al in Mi » Thu Dec 15, 2016 11:37 am

.456-.457 at the case mouth is way too deep.

think I run mine .472ish, have never touched it since I set it years ago.

did you happen to resize that initial case? Reason I ask is I've never been able to thumb a bullet deeper.
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Re: I was fooling around with the Hornady Crimper

Postby Pig_Popper » Thu Dec 15, 2016 1:58 pm

Al in Mi wrote:.456-.457 at the case mouth is way too deep.

think I run mine .472ish, have never touched it since I set it years ago.

did you happen to resize that initial case? Reason I ask is I've never been able to thumb a bullet deeper.


Hey Al -

Thanks for the reply , I misquoted, myself... I fixed my above post.

Also I had some relief cuts in the case mouth so that's how I was able to push it by thumb - certainly I look for different results at the time of sizing , seating, and crimping for cartridges I intend to use - just trying to get a bead on how your setting the Hornady crimp die.

Thanks
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Re: I was fooling around with the Hornady Crimper

Postby Bmt85 » Thu Dec 15, 2016 5:51 pm

Why are you using relief cuts on the case mouth?

If I had to take a guess as to the multiple crimps down the case mouth, it's probably because your crimping way too much, making that area small enough to pass the crimping area in the die, then your setting the die even lower, causing it to bite further down the case. Just a guess.

Pick up some good calipers, I prefer the mitutoyo absolute 500. It's also recommend to get a decent blade mic to check case head growth when going off book. You need to get measurements.

Sounds like you pretty much had it right to set the die, but went way too far. Run die down till it contacts the case (with seated bullet, of course), drop ram, run die an 1/8th turn in, lock it, send the case through, check case mouth measurement. If it's not enough, run the die down another 1/8th of a turn. I went .473", but I've been loading Barnes 200xpb and 275tsx, crimping into the driving band. May change when I start loading everything else, don't know yet.
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Re: I was fooling around with the Hornady Crimper

Postby Pig_Popper » Thu Dec 15, 2016 6:43 pm

Bmt85 wrote:Why are you using relief cuts on the case mouth?

If I had to take a guess as to the multiple crimps down the case mouth, it's probably because your crimping way too much, making that area small enough to pass the crimping area in the die, then your setting the die even lower, causing it to bite further down the case. Just a guess.

Pick up some good calipers, I prefer the mitutoyo absolute 500. It's also recommend to get a decent blade mic to check case head growth when going off book. You need to get measurements.

Sounds like you pretty much had it right to set the die, but went way too far. Run die down till it contacts the case (with seated bullet, of course), drop ram, run die an 1/8th turn in, lock it, send the case through, check case mouth measurement. If it's not enough, run the die down another 1/8th of a turn. I went .473", but I've been loading Barnes 200xpb and 275tsx, crimping into the driving band. May change when I start loading everything else, don't know yet.


I was using the sacrificed case and bullet to measure distance to the lands , I put the cartridge in the chamber and push till it pushes the bullet back into the case in contact with the lands , gently knock out from the muzzle end and take a measurement .

The interesting thing there is the lands are well beyond mag length so I can load the Monoflex 250 gr to full mag length and still have a sizable jump to the lands (freebore???)

Anyhow figured I mess with the crimp with that case.

I'll test fire the gun Wednesday with factory ammo and ensure function and then try some reloads .
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Re: I was fooling around with the Hornady Crimper

Postby pitted bore » Thu Dec 15, 2016 7:55 pm

Pig_Popper wrote: ... Ram goes down and I turned the die another 1/8 " down and locked it in, ran the loaded case through a couple of times and hardly the slightest perceptible crimp. With my thumb I could still set the bullet back (into the case deeper). ...

Pig_Popper-

I'm having a couple of problems interpreting the quoted statement in your post. Perhaps my senility is merely attacking more vigorously than usual.

[A] You write that you "turned the die another 1/8" down and locked it in". Is this what you really did? 1/8" (one-eighth inch) is 0.125 inches. The Hornady die is a standard 7/8x14 thread, which will move the die vertically up or down about 0.07143 inches per turn. To move the die down an eight of an inch, you would have had to turn the die 1.75 revolutions. Under the described circumstances, this seems a lot. Is this in fact the amount of vertical movement of your die?

[B] I suspect something is wrong if you can still set the bullet back into the case either after or before crimping. The "still" implies that after seating the bullet, but before any crimping operations at all, you could use thumb pressure to move the bullet further into the case. This shouldn't happen. If you have properly resized your brass, the case mouth will pretty firmly grip the bullet after the seating operation. The tension may not be as great as necessary, which is why various crimp dies may be required. Is your sizing die doing its job.

Again, apologies if I've misinterpreted your statements.

--Bob
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Re: I was fooling around with the Hornady Crimper

Postby Pig_Popper » Thu Dec 15, 2016 8:17 pm

pitted bore wrote:
Pig_Popper wrote: ... Ram goes down and I turned the die another 1/8 " down and locked it in, ran the loaded case through a couple of times and hardly the slightest perceptible crimp. With my thumb I could still set the bullet back (into the case deeper). ...

Pig_Popper-

I'm having a couple of problems interpreting the quoted statement in your post. Perhaps my senility is merely attacking more vigorously than usual.

[A] You write that you "turned the die another 1/8" down and locked it in". Is this what you really did? 1/8" (one-eighth inch) is 0.125 inches. The Hornady die is a standard 7/8x14 thread, which will move the die vertically up or down about 0.07143 inches per turn. To move the die down an eight of an inch, you would have had to turn the die 1.75 revolutions. Under the described circumstances, this seems a lot. Is this in fact the amount of vertical movement of your die?

[B] I suspect something is wrong if you can still set the bullet back into the case either after or before crimping. The "still" implies that after seating the bullet, but before any crimping operations at all, you could use thumb pressure to move the bullet further into the case. This shouldn't happen. If you have properly resized your brass, the case mouth will pretty firmly grip the bullet after the seating operation. The tension may not be as great as necessary, which is why various crimp dies may be required. Is your sizing die doing its job.

Again, apologies if I've misinterpreted your statements.

--Bob


Bob -

Hi the problem is not on your end ;). I probably divulged too much superfluous information that wasn't germane to my actual question.

I turned it 1/8 of a turn to the right , 1/8 of a complete revolution - after I didn't see a obvious crimp (I've only ever used Lee FCD ) then I kept turning it right to a max of two revolutions .

I bought a box of factory ammo tonight. I can't even tell that the factory rounds are crimped. There is a nice shiny ring at the very edge of the case mouth but other than that it looks uncrimped.

All this aside - I really just need to know what you ordinarily find to be the sweet spot for a sufficient crimp to resist bullet setback on a non cannelured bullet.

Thanks!
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Re: I was fooling around with the Hornady Crimper

Postby Hoot » Thu Dec 15, 2016 9:48 pm

I prefer to use an actual micrometer to a less accurate caliper for this.
Take a loaded, factory round and dial the mic closed so the the edge of the mouth does not pass through the edges of the anvil and spindle.
While holding the round against the edges of the mic that would not originally pass the round, slowly turn the mic out until the edge of the mouth barely slips through. Record that measurement.
Now you know what a factory crimped round diameter is.

Take one of your reloaded, uncrimped rounds and measure the case mouth diameter using the aforementioned method. IE Not too far down the case. Its called a taper for a good reason. That will give your your starting baseline. It should be wider than the factory crimped round you previously measured.
With the die screwed out a ways, run a loaded round up on the ram until it stops.
Screw the taper crimp die in until you feel it start to exhibit resistance not associated with the drag of the screw threads and stop. (I lube my threads for little resistance)
I mark a witness line on the top of mine with a sharpie.
Back the ram down and screw the die in say 1/4 turn.
Rerun the ram all the way up.
Back it down and remeasure the diameter using the aforementioned method. It should be smaller than it started but not as much as the factory example.
Advance the die down in 1/8 turns repeating until you reach the same diameter as the factory round or smaller if crimping into a cannelured bullet or one with driving band grooves. You don't have to reef on the set nut but hand snug it so the dies doesn't wiggle too much.
There is a school of thought that favors letting the die wiggle to comply coaxially with the case, not vice versa, but that's another discussion.
Al's advice of not going below .472 (though you could) is sound advice. You don't want to distort a smooth walled bullet into an hourglass figure from which it will not spring back. I have at least half a box of those myself.

In the case of a cannelured bullet it really doesn't dip down that far, but the driving band grooves are like the Grand Canyon. In the latter case, you don't want to crimp way down into the groove as it work hardens the bend zone in the case when it gets ripped free during ignition. Know when enough is enough.
Properly applied and I don''t pretend that even the factory gets that right every time, anyway properly applied, the bullet will resist both pushing in and pulling out. Not at any degree of pressure, but for commonly encountered pressure of handling and chambering.

Had to answer a couple of on-call phone calls while trying to write this over the past hour or so, so hope I didn't double with someone. Damn, another short answer where I lost control! ;)

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Re: I was fooling around with the Hornady Crimper

Postby plant_one » Thu Dec 15, 2016 11:15 pm

Hoot wrote: You don't want to distort a smooth walled bullet into an hourglass figure from which it will not spring back. I have at least half a box of those myself.




i had an acquaintance who was new to reloading try to "help" a mutual friend of ours into beginning reloading adventures with their Beowulf's. Blind leading the blind.

they did some basic testing & load development, and somewhere along the way when they went from testing to 'production' the crimp die went awry and the end result was this :o :o

Image

first time my friend fired one of these in his gun, he got super lucky and the case only ripped in half and the following round wouldnt chamber. Thankfully they were only plated bullets. i shudder to consider what might have happened with jacketed bullets.



the case mouth was at .500 and this is what the bulelts looked like - out of 300+ i had 7 or at that were "normal" as evidence by the 3 on the left
Image


needless to say, our mutual acquaintance officially gave up reloading and went back to "buying the good stuff". i inherited 300+ rounds of Beowulf that needed to be pulled down.



i was able to salvage most of the bullets, all the cases/primers, but tossed the powder on the front lawn - it was clumped up from a BUNCH of case lube left over inside the cases so i wasnt willing try to save $50 worth of lil gun and risk it.

we're still using up those bullets for plinker loads (if there is such a thing with a beowulf :lol: ), i just load them .020 short (and reduced the powder charge to compensate for it) so i have something to grab onto when seating and (properly) crimping them into the cases. There were about 1/3 of them that the plating was actually cut, so those went into the melting pot to be recast as something else down the road.




lesson is - dont do dumb stuff when reloading. My friend got REAAAAAAALLLY lucky and could have gotten badly hurt in the process of his buddy trying to help him out when he didnt know what the hell he was doing in the first place.
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Re: I was fooling around with the Hornady Crimper

Postby Pig_Popper » Thu Dec 22, 2016 11:04 am

Ultimately I took a cue from Hoot and did the following.

I put my calipers in a vice to hold them rock solid and used a factory round to open the caliper arms large enough to just allow the case neck to pass ~ .477"

I then adjusted the Hornady taper die to 1/8" past initial contact and continued to turn it until the reloads case neck passed through the caliper arms - this was roughly 5/8 past initial contact.

Thanks folks
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